Mad Flights
(March 2002)

By Robert Lunday

2003 Finalist for the Natalie Ornish Poetry Award for Best First Book of Poetry in Memory of A. C. Greene and John Edward Weems, given by the Texas Institute of Letters

Robert Lunday writes poems that resonate. Those readers reared in military families will be astounded at the chords he strikes, and the echoes of their own lives they will find in the particulars of his. This powerful collection should not be missed.

In Robert Lunday's sharply rhythmic poems, the otherness of other people haunts the poet. Others, especially others of the opposite gender, are mysteries, and mystery is always rich with its allures and sorrows in these superb poems. In the dangerous and confusing world where "Whatever last night's love was/burns off like haze," the poet pronounces this benediction: "Blessed is he or she who runs the fastest."

- Andrew Hudgins

Robert Lunday has combined a narrative impulse, a desire to tell the story, with an intense lyrical imagination, and the result is Mad Flights.

- Thomas Lux

About the Author

Robert Lunday grew up on Army posts, mainly in the South. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, he received an MA and PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. He has received two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a Writer-in-Residence Fellowship from St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, a PEN/Brazos Bookstore Prize, and a Barthelme/lnprint Fellowship for nonfiction. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and English at Houston Community College. http://www.robertlunday.net/